Review: Astral Chain is peak PlatinumGames under the neon lights of a futuristic anime

PlatinumGames does not shy away from showing you its influences for Astral Chain. It starts with your first glimpse of a Legion, your supernatural sidekick, to the overarching story and even through the gameplay. You may immediately want to wave the game off either as being “too anime” or providing a hodgepodge of indecipherable gameplay elements. To an extent, those statements aren’t wrong. But what Astral Chain has going for it is how well it adapts those things and still comes out making an awesome game that stands up well on its own virtues.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Humanity has come under siege from an extra-dimensional threat that has wiped out the vast majority of the population of Earth. To combat this, a mysterious cabal of rich and powerful people form an organization called Neuron that learns how to control said threat and turn it on their enemies. This premise doesn’t just sound like Neon Genesis Evangelion; it wears numerous specific plot points on its sleeve. At some point I think someone in charge said, “I sure did like Evangelion, so I’ll just take the frame from that to fit with my awesome gameplay!” Everything is still presented well, but the influence is undeniable.

That said, Astral Chain never feels like a game that thinks it’s more than it is. It never feels pretentious or that it’s trying to be incredibly deep and unique. The game borrows heavily from other media but never pretends to be superior to its inspirations. It just wants to be a fun anime that plays like a video game. In that regard, it is a resounding success.

The game’s Detective Mode gives you a lot of random information but also helps highlight important objects.

The game opens on a cutscene of scientists the not-so-secret government agency Neuron working on a new project to enslave their enemy into fighting for them, thus creating a Legion. That floating extra-dimensional monster becomes your sidekick and helps you fight for most of the game. Think of it like a Persona, or a Stand, or a Pokémon, whichever frame of reference you get. You immediately start to get an idea of how desperate the situation in this world is and how terrifying its would-be destroyers are. During this whole sequence, credits begin playing like the start of an anime or movie with a late title card.

When the scene immediately shifts to your player character jetting down this neon-soaked city on a motorcycle gunning down alien-corrupted humans, it reminds you that you’re playing a PlatinumGames production. Credits continue to go on as communications between different parts of Neuron are discussing a currently awful situation. Throughout the first “case” (read: chapter), you’ll be exposed to the primary elements that make up this game while going through a quick rundown of some of the major characters. It all comes together with the main character getting a sweet new power to control their own Legion and, in typical anime fashion, immediately becomes the best person ever to use it. At the end of the first chapter, you’re treated to a full-on anime TV show opening.

If you’re not into all of this, you may want to start backing away now.

You play as a self-named rookie cop who joins up with Neuron with his or her twin sibling Akira to work with their adoptive father, Max. During the transition into the motorcycle sequence from the opening cinematic, you’re able to design major features of your character. Once you select a gender, skin color, eye color, and hair color, you’re then suddenly popped into the action. The interesting thing is that whatever gendered character you don’t pick becomes the sibling Akira, who serves as the main vocal point in the story. Characters often speak to Akira as if you’re not there, thus making your character an incredibly silent protagonist.

The Astral Chain is more than just a fancy looking leash.

The gameplay and story of this game weave together in some pretty fascinating ways. The game is divided into two different types of missions, red and blue. Blue missions are investigation-focused, often spanning large chunks of a chapter. You’re gathering clues and evidence to help put together what all is happening in a given scenario, like a sudden bridge collapse or reports of red ghosts. This is done with the help of your IRIS, a holographic interface you can toggle on and off like Batman’s Detective Mode visor in Arkham Asylum. It will help you find key people and items as well as just looking cool. Sometimes you’ll have to chase down a suspect and bind them with your Astral Chain, and sometimes you’re just interviewing random witnesses to procure key information.

Once you’ve amassed enough details, you’ll be given a quiz to put together everyone’s accounts to get the story moving to its next beat. It feels like a goofy system where you have to fill in the blanks with key words you heard earlier, but honestly I haven’t seen a good investigation system in video games yet. This is certainly not the worst attempt at the social aspect being a gameplay mechanic. The nice thing about it is that if you get something wrong, you’re not penalized for it in any way other than your score as the story will simply continue. So if you don’t care about a high score, you’re not going to be held back by these sequences.

The Red missions of each “case” are combat-oriented and help break up the investigations. You either find a gateway to the extra-dimensional enemies’ homeworld or find a bunch of the beasts spilling into your world. Their homeworld ― called the Astral Plane ― will either be a quick one-and-done combat arena or will be a large chunk of level where you’re solving abstract puzzles and fighting off dangerous encounters. It sounds fairly basic, but the puzzles do continue to evolve and most of the time end up being fun.

The gameplay and story of astral chain weave together in some pretty fascinating ways.

The only major complaint, which applies to the game as a whole, is that you’re often handed the solution of certain puzzles by a tutorial before you can at least poke at them by yourself. It’s weird because in certain parts of the game, like the opening chapter, you’re handed a new tool in a crisis and are given nothing more than basic controls to start fighting with it. Then, in the next chapter, you’ll get more proper gameplay tutorials. It’s great when those happen because it makes you feel like you’re thrown into the fire with a new weapon, but having those puzzles spelled out is kind of a drag. Exploring this world is key to finding upgrades and gain better practice with your abilities.

The visual aspects of the world really help make you want to traverse every inch of it. Even if you don’t find a new item, you’ll still be treated to something that looks cool. When you’re in the main world, it’s a city covered in neon lights and advertisements. Different parts of the city have different degrees of high-tech living, and it’s clear when you’re starting to move out to the more impoverished neighborhoods. I would hesitate to say this game has a cyberpunk aesthetic because it’s more of a neon, shiny future with a seedy underside. It’s not a world of cybernetic enhancements and hacking, but just an advanced world where technology is being updated quickly to help fight off the oncoming apocalypse that slowly claims the world. Either way, the different city parts you visit are lively, the Astral Plane looks appropriately alien, the characters look great, and enemy designs are top notch. The animations can be a little off in low-impact scenarios like talking heads in an office, but when it matters most they are as fluid and dynamic as you could possibly hope for.

Your different Legions can help solve different puzzles, especially in the Chimeras’ realm.

This is a PlatinumGames title, so you are probably eager to know how it plays. Structurally, it feels very similar to most of Hideki Kamiya’s games, but it has a combat identity of its own. Astral Chain isn’t about scoring massive combo chains like Bayonetta or having an insanely broad arsenal to fight with. There are three weapons overall, and each of the five Legions you will collect have their own set of abilities you can equip it with. The real hook comes from how you and your Legion interact with each other. For the most part, the Legion will actually do its own thing, although you can point it in the right direction by tapping the left trigger. This generally means you need to know which Legion’s abilities are best suited for the combat you’re in, and you’re there to back them up. The key is that your Legion is always attached to the eponymous Astral Chain like a leash, meaning sometimes you need to change who you have out to help you. But that chain also has its own set of mechanics. Most notably, you can direct your Legion around an enemy and bind the target in the Astral Chain by closing a full circle, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. There are also puzzle and platforming sequences which revolve around the chain, and ultimately these aspects all come together in a way that neatly blends the narrative and the gameplay.

This is an action-heavy game, though, and things can get chaotic. Sometimes you’re in very narrow spaces fighting or surrounded on multiple sides by enemies. It can quickly become frustrating when the camera is being pointed away from what you want because you’re trying to move the Legion, or sometimes it just catches weird on the terrain and makes it hard to see the fight. For the most part, this isn’t a problem, but it always seemed to creep up when it was the absolute worst time to do so. When you have a good command on the situation, the camera’s not fighting you, and you get into a good rhythm, combat feels absolutely amazing. You feel like a real anime hero as you rip apart enemies. You’re rewarded not on just your speed but on variety of attacks as well. Unlike Bayonetta or Nier Automata, this is about using a wide range of your abilities to maximize combat efficiency.

If you’re into futuristic style, this game is positively dripping with it

For the most part, the aforementioned story of the game is solid. There is a lot of good detective drama, lighthearted moments, tremendous side characters, and over-the-top action. One of the core lines of this story, however, revolves around your sibling. For someone who is essentially the main character due to your silence, they can be incredibly grating. The voice acting is good, but it’s wasted on a story that focuses too much on your sibling being the worst aspects of anime stereotypes, like being mad that you’re better than them and throwing constant fits at the most unnecessary times. That aspect never gets better, and it’s a shame because of all the trouble they went through to do this dual-character narrative. Fortunately, just about everything and everyone else in the story does a much better job at pulling you through those rougher parts.

It needs to be emphasized that this game sounds great. The sound design masterfully sets you in this world, be it the high-tech future city or the non-Euclidean landscape of the Astral Chain. Attacks sound great when they connect, the sounds of weapons transforming is amazing, and inhuman sounds (including your Legion) are all terrifically alien and fierce. It is all backed by an incredible soundtrack that sets the tone for your quiet, thoughtful investigations as well as your explosive battles. Throughout my time with the game, I was reminded of Mass Effect 2 and its soundtrack, balancing the larger and smaller moments almost effortlessly. Then throw in the awesome Japanese rock main-themes now and again to really punctuate the whole setup. Astral Chain lets you know that it’s here to party.

While Astral Chain may not be the new gold standard of action games or the sleeper hit it could have been, it is still without a doubt something to check out. It’s a solid action game with some fun investigation mechanics and a cool, anime story. If you’ve been intimidated by PlatinumGames in the past, this may be a great one to cut your teeth on.